President Obama's challenge: Selling ideas, not just himself

Barack Obama is the world’s greatest pitchman when it comes to selling one particular product — himself — but he’s been far less successful, and sometimes a downright failure, at selling his policy prescriptions to the public.

If Obama has any hope of achieving his ambitious second-term goals, he’ll have to summon his somewhat erratic powers of persuasion on behalf of gun control, a liberal take on deficit reduction that protects entitlements and immigration reform — the latter the subject of a kickoff speech in Las Vegas Tuesday, the first in a flurry of 2013 policy-pushing appearances.

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Obama has always struggled at sales, at least during years when his name isn’t on a bumper sticker. His personal approval rating, now in the 50s, has always far outpaced the popularity of his policies, in part because he did such a poor job of selling controversial first-term proposals on health care reform, the stimulus, Wall Street reform and environmental proposals.

Yet the fate of his second term rests on his ability to do what he thus far failed to accomplish: generating election-like fervor in an off year and reanimating his 2012 campaign apparatus — all without the powerful imperative of a hotly contested presidential election where Obama’s very fate, not just a few of his policies, are on the line.

“We have learned a very clear lesson,” says Obama’s 2012 campaign manager and top political operative Jim Messina, who is organizing a new group, Organizing for Action, to mobilize Obama’s backers for policy pushes, starting with guns. “In 2009 and 2010, we were playing an inside game — it was absolutely crucial do what we accomplished. But now, we have to play the outside game.”

Messina, echoing the sentiments of several other top Obama advisers interviewed by POLITICO, believes there’s only one meaningful precedent for what Obama will be attempting: Ronald Reagan’s 1985 barnstorming tour to pass a bipartisan tax-cut plan that passed the House and Senate in 1986.

No president since Reagan — who won a record 525 Electoral College votes in 1984 compared with Obama’s 323 last year — has been able to extend the momentum of his campaign victory into a successful policy push. And Obama’s efforts on behalf of causes — or candidates other than himself — have often been halfhearted or short-lived.

On the other hand, no president, not even the Gipper, possessed the fundraising and social-media powerhouse comparable to the billion-dollar Obama for America campaign, run with such merciless efficiency by Messina. Democratic sources tell POLITICO that the rebranded OFA is mulling over the full range of appeals it employed during the last campaign, from pitches for $5 contributions, to big donor appeals, to mass-turnout rallies and ad buys.

“I do think we are trying to build a new model,” added Messina. “There are no rose-colored glasses that this will be easy. The No. 1 thing is that we need to stay together. We are strongest if we get out of this town [Washington] and reinforce the clear consensus we see nationally on immigration, the economy and gun legislation.”